So What Can I Eat!: How to Make Sense of the New Dietary Guidelines for Americans and Make Them Your Own

Introduction

My mother, a very intelligent, well-read woman, is full of energy and a lust for life. She enjoys music, theater, her grandchildren, and, much to her chagrin, food. She’s battled with her weight for decades and has worked hard to understand the basics of nutrition. So I was very surprised when I asked her what brand of yogurt she eats and she answered, I stay away from yogurt because it has too much sugar.

My mother’s renunciation of yogurt, a food she loves, is an example of how misinformation leads to our making less-than-optimal food decisions. Yogurt contains natural sugar and is a great source of important nutrients such as calcium, especially for a woman my mother’s age.

I am a registered dietitian and a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. It is my goal to clarify the often conflicting information you hear every day about food and nutrition and to help you incorporate the nutritional science of the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, as well as of the MyPyramid Food Guidance System, into your daily life. The guidelines evolved from an analysis of the latest scientific information by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), which was appointed by the secretaries of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). These guidelines are the foundation for the MyPyramid Food Guidance System.

In this book, you’ll learn how to create your own healthful, delicious diet according to your specific needs and preferences, whether your goal is to lose weight, gain weight, have more energy, or manage or prevent diet-related health conditions.

Not only do the Dietary Guidelines and the MyPyramid Food Guidance System contain recommendations for incorporating nutritional powerhouse foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains into your diet, but they cite the importance of not specifically counting calories but making calories count. For the first time, the new guidelines give us some wiggle room to be more flexible in our food selections. For each calorie level, a certain number of discretionary calories is allotted. These calories are essentially the extra calories we earn once we’ve met our daily quotas for nutrient-rich foods in each food category. We can use these extra calories to:

Help ourselves to larger portions of nutrient-rich foods.

Indulge in alcoholic beverages or sweets.

Eat foods from various food groups that already contain extra fat or sugar.

Add butter or other solid fats to foods we’re already consuming.

While not all of us can afford these extra calories (for example, if we’re trying to lose weight), it’s nice to know some of the low-nutrient foods we enjoy can still be part of our diet, at least sometimes; we don’t have to give up all the foods that give us pleasure. In this book you’ll learn what your estimated calorie needs are, as well as the dietary pattern you can use as a building block to create your own unique daily meal plans. You will also learn what counts as a portion for various foods in each food category and will be given tools to help you fit many of your favorite foods into your daily meal plans and overall dietary pattern.

Every year, new diet books scream the message that if we want to lose weight or improve our health, we need to:

Avoid a particular food or food group.

Eat only at or until specific times of the day.

Combine certain types of foods with one another at mealtimes.

Not eat past a certain hour.

The tremendous sales of diet books prove that many of us are constantly in search of the perfect diet—one that will help us lose our love handles or spare tires, drop a clothing size, get more toned or more muscular bodies, or simply weigh less. And while each so-called diet book may offer an idea or a strategy that can help in our quest to lose weight quickly and easily, most of these books encourage very restrictive, low-calorie diets that ask us to drastically cut back on many of the foods and food groups we enjoy, such as carbohydrates and high-fat foods.

When I use the word diet in this book, it’s not in a restrictive sense. I’m a registered dietitian, not a food cop. You’ll discover that you don’t have to severely restrict calories or avoid any food group to achieve your health or nutrition goals. I love chocolate, for example; I eat it but still have a healthful, balanced diet. You, too, can include your favorite foods in your diet, and this book will teach you how. In addition, I want to help you change your mindset, just as I changed mine after years of going on and off diets. Too many of us (myself included when I was a teenager) are seduced by the idea of taking weight off fast and pay little regard to whether the diet we go on is sustainable or even healthful and well balanced over the long term. I want you to think less about going on or off any diet program and more about making a balanced, sustainable, and nutritious overall eating plan a part of your life.

This book will help you create your own healthful eating plan based on the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the MyPyramid Food Guidance System. You’ll see that even processed or fast foods, ice cream, and butter can fit into an otherwise nutrient-packed diet. You’ll be able to enjoy eating, without feeling deprived, because if you don’t enjoy your food, as we all know, you’ll eventually return to the habits that contributed to your becoming nutritionally challenged in the first place.

PART ONE

So What Are the

Guidelines and How

Can You Fit Them

into Your Life?

1

Sitting Down to Dinner

with Uncle Sam

We are all in search of the perfect diet, a quick and easy way to help us look and feel better. Some of us have diet-influenced conditions that we want to control or better manage, such as high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes, or maybe we just want to use the latest scientific information to fine-tune our current dietary habits. The problem is that so many diet books and commercial weight-loss programs recommend restrictive eating practices. They tell us to:

Avoid high-carbohydrate foods, especially pasta, bread, cereal, potatoes, and sugar.

Limit or restrict the intake of fruits and vegetables.

Avoid red meat.

Shun dairy foods.

Eat only raw foods or certain-colored foods.

Of course, no one diet book asks you to eliminate all these foods (if it did, we’d have nothing left to eat!). But scores of books do recommend that we limit many foods that are known to provide vital nutrients and can be part—sometimes a big part—of a healthful, balanced, nutrient-rich diet. To illustrate this, I’ve put together a list of foods and beverages that many popular diet books encourage you to minimize if not avoid entirely, at least while you actively try to lose weight while following their programs.

Are These Really No-No Foods?

alcoholic beverages

bagels

balsamic vinegar

barbecue sauce

beans

beef

beets

bread

breath mints

caffeinated beverages

candy

carrots

chewing gum

coleslaw

corn

cottage cheese

cough drops

cough syrups

crackers

cream soups

doughnuts

egg yolks

farmer cheese

French dressing

fried fish and shellfish

fruit

fruit juice

gravy

hot dogs

ice cream

ketchup

milk

parsnips

pasta

peas

pork

potatoes

poultry

ready-to-eat cereals

sandwich meats

snack foods

soft drinks

stick margarine

table sugar

thousand island dressing

tuna fish salad

veal

white flour

yams

yogurt

The good news is that you won’t have to give up any of your favorite foods to follow a diet that’s consistent with the Dietary Guidelines. You may have to eat smaller portions, especially of foods that are high in fat and/or added sugar. But you’ll find that you can actually consume a lot of food—perhaps more food than you currently do—because you will likely choose the nutrient-dense fruit fruit juice gravy hot dogs ice cream ketchup milk parsnips pasta peas pork potatoes poultry ready-to-eat cereals sandwich meats snack foods soft drinks stick margarine table sugar thousand island dressing tuna fish salad veal white flour yams yogurt foods within each category more often than you do now. This will help you to take in fewer total calories but still feel satisfied. Also, because no specific food is a no-no, and all foods that you enjoy can be worked into your overall dietary pattern, you may avoid feeling deprived the way you do on other diets.

No one diet is absolutely perfect, of course, but the new Dietary Guidelines do provide the best, most comprehensive, and most upto-date scientific information to lay the foundation for a healthful, balanced, and sustainable eating plan. This plan does not discriminate against any one food or food group but instead encourages you to choose nutrient-rich foods and beverages that will help you manage your weight, control or prevent diet-related ailments, and fill any nutrient gaps in your diet. So whether your goal is to shed weight, gain weight, lower your blood pressure or blood cholesterol levels, manage your diabetes, prevent diseases like heart disease and cancer, or simply have a well-balanced, nutrient-rich, and satisfying diet, the science-based Dietary Guidelines are the perfect place to start.

What Are the Dietary Guidelines?

The guidelines, published jointly by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) every five years, are designed to promote optimal nutrition, prevent disease, and serve as the foundation for nutrition policies. The recommendations are based on a preponderance of scientific evidence about which dietary practices will lower the risk of chronic disease and promote health. And while you can certainly benefit by following even a few of the guidelines (for example, eating more fruits and vegetables than you do now), all the recommendations in the new guidelines, taken as a whole, will provide a roadmap by which you can steer your own unique course toward more healthful and balanced, yet still enjoyable, eating.

The deliberately simplistic MyPyramid graphic on page 10 will remind you to choose healthful foods and to and make physical activity a part of your day, every day. MyPyramid encourages you to look for the following in your food choices:

Variety: Eat foods within all the food groups (fruits, vegetables, grains, meat and beans, and milk) and subgroups (for example, dark green, deep-orange, and starchy vegetables).

Proportionality: Eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fat-free or low-fat milk products; eat fewer foods that are high in saturated or trans fats, added sugars, cholesterol, salt, and alcohol.

Moderation: Choose foods that are prepared in a way that makes them lower in saturated and trans fats, added sugars, cholesterol, salt, and alcohol.

Activity: Incorporate more moderate or vigorous daily physical activity into your schedule.

MyPyramid

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture

The Dietary Guidelines emphasize foods and beverages as the most important sources of nutrients and healthful compounds. Of course, not everyone will be able to meet his or her nutritional needs through foods alone, so, in some cases, fortified foods and dietary supplements can be helpful. This book will highlight a wide range of foods and beverages that you can choose from all the major food categories, day to day. If you are pregnant, have a medical condition, or follow a vegetarian or otherwise restricted diet and feel that you cannot meet your nutritional needs with foods or beverages alone, see your physician and a registered dietitian to discuss dietary supplements.

The Dietary Guidelines are ideals, and you may initially find them challenging to follow. My goal is to help you adapt the guidelines to your individual needs and to come closer to achieving the ideals on your own terms. This doesn’t mean that you have to follow the guidelines precisely and perfectly, but you can use them as a starting point to improve your intake of key foods (for example, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains) and the nutrients they contain. So even if you find it tough to get all the recommended foods into your diet—and when I say diet, I don’t mean this in the restrictive sense, but in the pattern of what you eat—the guidelines can help you create a well-rounded dietary plan that you can easily follow, not for a short time but for life!

Changes to the Dietary Guidelines

The current Dietary Guidelines differ in scope and purpose from past versions because they are oriented toward policymakers, health-care providers, registered dietitians, and other nutrition educators, rather than toward the general public, as were previous versions. They also contain more technical information. But don’t despair. In this book, I’ll help you create your own personal dietary and physical activity plans based on the new guidelines. Before you get started, though, here’s a sample of a diet that is consistent with the Dietary Guidelines:

Menus for you: Throughout most of this book and in the sample two-week meal plans (see chapter 7), I use 2,000 calories as a reference level to be consistent with the Nutrition Facts panels on food labels. Your individual calorie needs, as well as your corresponding meal plan, may differ depending on your age, weight, height, gender, and activity level (see chapter 2 and appendix B to determine your individual calorie needs). Once you determine your estimated calorie needs, see chapter 7 to find the corresponding daily meal plan.

Personal palate pleasers: The recommendations in the Dietary Guidelines are for Americans older than two years of age. What’s great about these new guidelines is that they allow you to choose a wide range of foods and beverages. Whether you’re a vegan, you eat a lot of ethnic foods because of your heritage or individual food preferences, or you don’t drink milk because you’re allergic or don’t like the taste, you’ll be given the tools to adapt the guidelines to help you maximize your nutrient intake. For example, if you are a vegetarian or a vegan and you don’t eat meat of any kind, you can choose from a variety of other foods, such as beans, nuts, and seeds, to get protein and other key nutrients (see chapter 3 and appendix A to find meat alternatives).

The right calories: The new Dietary Guidelines clearly emphasize balancing calorie intake with expenditure,